Socialmedialand

Posts Tagged ‘#fedex’

If you can't say anything nice...

I wasn’t going to post about this. I heard the story when it first came out, turned to my coworker Dustin, chatted about it for a second and then went on. But since then there’s been a flury of discussion about it (to my actual amazement) I think that phenomenon is what really bears discussion. So at the prompting of my friend Christy, who pointed out that this is right in line with my blog’s theme, I’ve decided to speak up.

That’s right, I’m talking about the @KeyInfluencer / #Fedex fiasco. You can read some samples of what people where saying about it at Shankman.com  but the main story is that Mr. Andrews (aka KeyInfluencer) wrote the following Tweet upon arriving in Memphis for a client meeting with FedEx:

Someone over at FedEx saw it and took offense, they wrote him a pretty nasty letter (you can read the full text at the Shankman site I linked above.)

Commence character slaughter. Everyone is tweeting about and commenting on this story. What a huge mistake he made. How could he be on his way to a social media presentation and say something like this on Twitter? Etc, etc. His wife wrote this eloquent defense of his actions, and he explained his own position on his blog. Fine. I think the original incident has been talked about to death.

But what about the bigger picture? This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. It’s just been highly publicized. I see a lot of things that went wrong in this situation but not a lot that went right – for anybody involved. The original tweet, the subsequent letter, the blogs and comments and tweets that followed, all of it was a little off. Because again and again people seemed to forget one major thing. Social media is about people, bottom line. These aren’t case studies or empty voids we’re talking to or about. They are people. So let’s treat each other like people.

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

That’s right, we have to go back to our basic kindergarten, Disney lessons here. When you’re going to tweet something – even in the 140 character limit, you have to think about how it might affect the people who are going to read it. And when you see an example of tweeting gone wrong, and you want to blog about it or add your rude comment to said blog, you also need to think about how it will affect the person you’re referring to as well as the people who will read it. You can try to draw lines around what you said in a personal context versus a professional one, but those lines are blurring faster and faster. So make it easy on yourself.

Don’t say something online that you wouldn’t say to a person’s face.

Plain and simple.

Let’s move on people, but let’s move on with our mothers’ lessons in mind. Let’s be polite and treat each other with respect. Thank you.